ARCHITECTURE SPECIAL

As a part of this month's feature on architecture we look at one of the uses of Photoshop to assist visualisation of new building design and how it influences the process of getting a design from concept to solid bricks on the ground. The people in this speciality are playing for big dollars, we were shown examples in which the visualisation persuaded the planning authority to allow an additional floor to a block of apartments. The extra 8 apartments added close to £2m to the value of the building - not a bad return on investment for a few quid on an A3 print out of an inkjet!

We spent time with one of the leading experts in this field, Phil Voas of EWA Architects Limited who have a base in Cheshire. Phil is an architectural technician, an unassuming title which hardly begins to describe the computing power and skill at his fingertips. EWA handle all sizes of contracts but at the top end they bid for new football stadia and other prestigious public building work. The process from design concept to hand-over can run to many years but we follow the progression from sketches and site surveys to full 3-D visualisation ahead of approval to break ground and start laying bricks. Like all complex projects there are a great many skills brought to bear and photography is just one of them. Work commences with a survey of the plot and the preparation of a brief, which will define things like how many apartments will be built, how many floors will be used and how the development will sympathetically blend into the local environment. It is at this stage that the visualisation work commences. Traditionally this was done with pen and ink and sometimes watercolour but today it is as likely to be carried out using simple primitive shapes in a 3-D design package.

Once the concept is agreed with the client it is time to make the first approaches to the statutory bodies to obtain outline permissions and agree some basic requirements on architectural matters. You need to know at the outset if the building you are planning to knock down to make way for your new project is standing on the remains of a Roman Amphitheatre!

At this stage the engineers, designers, surveyors and quantity surveyors get to work to put flesh onto the concept and work out exactly what the new building is going to look like and what materials it is going to be made from. As soon as the draft engineering drawings are available people like Voas can move in to produce visualisations for the planners and clients to approve. It is much easier to remove a wall with a swipe of a mouse than a kango hammer, so it is best to get all the parties to agree at the earliest possible moment.

The engineers and designers work almost exclusively in AutoCAD (or its rival ProEngineer) but the translation into Discreet's 3D Studio Max is relatively seamless, including doing all the hard work of preparing masks. Once the building is placed into 3DS it is joined by the picture of the surrounding, taken at the survey stage or after the ground has been cleared. 3DS has the ability to interpret map and survey information and with this the camera angle positions are set up. For realism the camera angles set for the surroundings are used to distort the virtual building to make it match. Thankfully this also drags the shape of all the components such as windows with it and so the entire glass work can be exported as an Alpha Channel which Photoshop can employ as a mask to control the added reflections at a late stage.

In the visualisation, reflections are invariably placed in the windows. Photoshop handles this part of the job best using stock images of sky and clouds or, if the angle of view requires it, a flipped view of the surroundings. This is taken by standing in the position of the new building and making a photograph looking out at the view. This reflection is usually dulled, blurred and blued slightly to make it more realistic. Photoshop noise and blur filters are also used to take the edge of the hard lined vector drawing and blend it to the photographic structure of the scene image (including image grain if appropriate).

Once the composited image is finished it will be used initially to present the case to the local authority planning committee and once the design has been agreed the modified drawing will be used to advertise the sale of the apartments or office space.

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Photo Quote: Searching is everything - going beyond what you know. And the test of the earch is really in the things themselves, the things you seek to understand. What is important is not what you think about them, but how they enlarge you. - Wynn Bullock

There are 333 days to get ready for the SWPP Convention and Trade Show at The Hilton London Metropole Hotel ...
which starts on Tuesday 8th January 2013